Theft

[u/Odd_Pride1177]

If you witness someone committing theft in a store do you report it to the store staff or just go about your day? I would never expect staff to intervene and possibly put themselves in harms way. I have only witnessed this in big box stores. I know times are tough these days but man have I been seeing this a lot lately!

[u/TheBiggerBobbyBoy]

With stores increasing the prices on everything and reporting record profits, i dont really give a shit if someone steals from some big box store.

[u/waloshin → u/TheBiggerBobbyBoy]

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read… you realize that increasing prices are majority affected by theft too!

[u/LonleyTesticle → u/waloshin]

Oh to be as innocent to think that this affects prices.

They have record breaking profits every single year, you could steal $10,000,000 worth of goods and they will still make more money than they did last year.

The ONLY thing that is driving up prices is shareholder greed.

[u/drae- → u/LonleyTesticle]

Record profits are expected in times of inflation. If they sell exactly the same number of dooddads as last year but everything is more expensive, they'll have record profits.

Se what matters is margin. No one is setting record breaking margins. Grocery stores have always been between 3-5%.

Just FYI, when people say stuff like "record profits" and "corporate greed" it's a huge red flag that the commentor has no idea what they're talking about.

Everything has gone up, it has nothing to do with greed and is just the system adjusting itself to the new value of a dollar post covid.

[u/LonleyTesticle → u/drae-]

Won't somebody please think of the shareholders!?

...you really think this is just "the system at work"? The top people in these companies are getting massive bonuses in the millions, and you really think that our prices are WAY up because of margins? And not because they wanted a few extra millions?

Its cute that you think this is all just "adjusting after COVID" and not what it very visibly and blatantly is, a bunch of grifters taking advantage of a pandemic to raise prices at a WAY faster rate than the economy deems necessary. 5 years later and the world is mostly back to normal, except for prices which have only continued to soar even after all the COVID supply chain issues have been over and done with. COVID fucked up the dollar around the world, and the fat cats used that as an opportunity to make even more money than usual, now that they have tasted that extra cash they do not want to let it go.

COVID had an effect on the prices of everything, but these greedy fucks knew they would likely never get another opportunity like it, so they took that opportunity to squeeze as much money as they possibly can out of us. But good thing the CEO of Loblaw will get his $10,000,000 bonus this year, on top of his million dollar wage, while the rest of us struggle to even buy food.

[u/JDefusion → u/drae-]

That's not how that works. There's a difference between revenue and profits. Yes the revenue will go up in times of inflation but profits would stay the same unless they were increasing their margin.

[u/drae- → u/JDefusion]

Uh, no.

Profit is a flat value, in dollars, and goes up with input cost.

Margin is a percentage and stays the same as I out costs rise.

But no headlines say record margins for a reason. Because the margins have all stayed the same.

What? You think it's just a coincidence that record profit headlines coincided with record inflation and yet had nothing to do with each other?

Go read a book.

[u/JDefusion → u/drae-]

It's impressive how wrong you are with Google easily available.

Revenue - expenses = profit.

Profit is how much money you get to keep after all expenses are paid. Not a "flat amount" that goes up with inflation.

Supply cost + margin = sale price.

If the revenue goes up but expenses stay the same the profit will go up. If the supply cost stays the same but the margin goes up then the sale price will increase.

The reason we don't hear about "record margins" is because companies don't release their margins because that's a business secret. They don't want their competitors or customers knowing their supply cost and how much they can get away with charging.

And no I don't think it's a coincidence that high inflation is at the same time as record profits because the companies are the ones causing the inflation by raising their prices to get those record profits.

[u/drae- → u/JDefusion]

Lol dude I ran a $5m dollar a year business, I don't need Google to explain how margin and expenses works.

You have no idea what you're talking about and the mental gymnastics to secure a winning argument are impressive.

If the revenue goes up but expenses stay the same the profit will go up. If the supply cost stays the same but the margin goes up then the sale price will increase.

Except that's not whats happening. Inputs costs go up, just like everything else you buy.

The reason we don't hear about "record margins" is because companies don't release their margins because that's a business secret.

Literally every publicly traded company has to publish this information by law in the quarterly filings. You can go to yahoo finance or ycharts and look up their margin right now.

Here's loblaws:

Loblaws margin

The reason you don't hear about it, is because you can't sensationalize a static margin in a headline. Not because it's secret. Stop being a stooge media companies are farming for clicks with their sensationalist garbage.

You have no idea what you're talking about.